Gayle Stuns With 175 in T20 Match

By Huw Richards

April 23, 2013

Chris Gayle further enshrined his position as the defining performer in Twenty20, the newest and fastest of cricket’s three formats, with an astonishing innings Tuesday for Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League.

The 33-year-old Jamaican struck the bowlers of Pune Warriors for 175 not out, beating the highest previous Twenty20 score of 158 by the New Zealander Brendan McCullum. He struck 17 sixes — cricket’s out-of-the-playing-area equivalent of a baseball home run — equaling the all-time record for any form of cricket by Gerrie Snyman of Namibia and breaking the previous mark for Twenty20.

He was so dominant that he was able to set these records in spite of slowing visibly in the second half of his 66-ball innings.

He had raced to 100 from 30 balls, the fastest ever in any form of cricket, and struck only one of his sixes in the final five overs of Bangalore’s innings of 20 six-ball overs.

“I’m lost for words. It was just one of those days when I was hitting the ball really well and it was coming out of the middle of the bat,” said Gayle, who confirmed that he had chosen to slow down in mid-innings.

In the process he propelled Bangalore to 263 for 5, a record for any team in T20 cricket, beating the previous mark of 260 by Sri Lanka’s national team.

The one disappointment of an innings that ended with his dumbfounded opponents queuing to offer handshakes and congratulations was that the slowdown deprived of a shot at T20’s first-ever score of 200.

“It is unbelievable. I’ve played cricket for 20 years and never seen anything like it,” said his Bangalore teammate Muttiah Muralitharan, the all-time record wicket-taker in five-day test cricket “in my lifetime nobody has ever batted like it.

One fan summed up the barrage with a home-made banner reading “When Gayle bats, fielders are spectators and spectators are fielders.”